Muammar Gaddafi, like any good magician, is employing misdirection to try to avoid happening to him what is happening in other Arab countries. “Hey Palestinians, let’s you and him fight!”

Is the Obama White House turning social media into State Run Media 2.0?  There’s a bit of media sour grapes in that charge, but it’s also true that the more the White House does an end-run around the media, the more they can paint with whatever rose-colored paintbrush they want.

Really, is Israel the main problem in the Middle East? Even those who are protesting in Arab countries are protesting their own governments, not Israel.

And if Obama has lost Bill Maher, he’s lost liberal America.

So what’s the huge deal in Wisconsin? Why are teachers abandoning their posts (and students) to protest at the capitol. The Wall St. Journal explains.

Mr. Walker’s very modest proposal would take away the ability of most government employees to collectively bargain for benefits. They could still bargain for higher wages, but future wage increases would be capped at the federal Consumer Price Index, unless otherwise specified by a voter referendum. The bill would also require union members to contribute 5.8% of salary toward their pensions and chip in 12.6% of the cost of their health insurance premiums.

If those numbers don’t sound outrageous, you probably work in the private economy. The comparable nationwide employee health-care contribution is 20% for private industry, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The average employee contribution from take-home pay for retirement was 7.5% in 2009, according to the Employee Benefits Research Institute.

Mr. Walker says he has no choice but to make these changes because unions refuse to negotiate any compensation changes, which is similar to the experience Chris Christie had upon taking office in New Jersey. Wisconsin is running a $137 million deficit this year and anticipates coming up another $3.6 billion short in the next two-year budget. Governor Walker’s office estimates the proposals would save the state $300 million over the next two years, and the alternative would be to lay off 5,500 public employees.

(Hat tip: Betsy Newmark, a teacher.)

In short:

• The union refuses to be treated same as everyone else.
• The union doesn’t care about the state’s financial problems; let someone else pay the price.
• The union doesn’t want the governor to make the tough choices, at least if those tough choices affect the union.

This is what liberal politics has given us; teachers, and a union, that frankly don’t care about the fix we’re all in. If you want to complain that teachers aren’t paid as  much as those in the public sector, who’s fault is that? It’s the fault of those who insist on keeping their jobs, and their paychecks, in the hands of government.

Not all Wisconsin teachers approve of playing hooky for politics, nor are they all against this belt-tightening. But those that are, are doing their profession a disservice, and are exposing the problems with their union.

And here’s another entry for Civility Watch. If you thought the previous video of the lady with a Hitler sign was a one-off crackpot, check out those signs, including a very clear gun-violence message towards the governor.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is compared to Hitler for his stance on unions.

Yeah, no big deal to Democrats. But put targets on a map in areas your campaign is targeting, and that’ll turn a mild-mannered guy into a killer, eh?

Justin Bieber, in an interview with Rolling Stone (yes, I’m really noting and linking to this item), gives one of the best anti-government healthcare arguments ever. He said,

Canada’s the best country in the world. We go to the doctor and we don’t need to worry about paying him, but here, your whole life, you’re broke because of medical bills.

Think about that. We go to the doctor and we don’t need to worry about paying him…

Herein, despite all the wisdom of a 16 year-old, lies the mindset of those who believe in government healthcare, namely, that of getting something for nothing.

Georgetown University Law Professor Randy Barnett provides a succinct explanation of what’s wrong with the Obamacare individual mandate:

Here’s a thought experiment. Imagine that I tell you 100 things that you may not do tomorrow. For example, you cannot run on a treadmill, eat broccoli, buy a car, and 97 other things. While your liberty would be restricted, there would still be an infinite number of things you may still do.

Now suppose I tell you 100 things that you must do tomorrow. You must run on a treadmill, eat broccoli, buy a car, and 97 other things. These 100 mandates could potentially occupy all your time and consume all your financial resources.

You can see why economic mandates such as the individual mandate in Obamacare are so much more onerous than either economic regulations or prohibitions, and why so dangerous an unwritten congressional power should not be implied.

Be sure to read the whole thing.

Well, allegedly. You think sophisticated man-made computers and the amounts of data they store are a lot, just wait until you find out what’s inside you.

Looking at both digital memory and analog devices, the researchers calculate that humankind is able to store at least 295 exabytes of information. (Yes, that’s a number with 20 zeroes in it.)

Put another way, if a single star is a bit of information, that’s a galaxy of information for every person in the world. That’s 315 times the number of grains of sand in the world. But it’s still less than one percent of the information that is stored in all the DNA molecules of a human being.

If you found a disc drive in the middle of the jungle, you’d just know that it was man-made. But we have something far more capable (and small) inside of us, but that just worked itself out on its own. Riiight.

Ignorant 2nd Amendment related comment by a pundit (# 1)

But whether you think a ban on police-style assault weapons such as the one Jared Lee Loughner used in Tucson is good policy or not, it is curious to see that Republicans are not even bothering to make legitimate arguments against such proposals.

Note: The Glock 19, used in the Tucson shooting, is not a police-style assault weapon (whatever that means). It is a semi-automatic handgun, used by military, police, and civilians in both law enforcement, self defense, and sport shooting.

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Ignorant 2nd Amendment related comment by a pundit (# 2)

Even the most conservative jurists held for decades that the Second Amendment was meant to protect state militias rather than an individual right to own weapons.

Note: Reference the Militia Act of 1792 (several years after the Bill of Rights, by the way). Regardless, the means to have a well regulated militia is by the enumeration of a right to the people.

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Ignorant 2nd Amendment related comment by a pundit (# 3)

Members of the narrow majority on the Supreme Court who believe that the Second Amendment establishes an individual right to bear arms would not hold that the Constitution protects one’s right to own a nuclear submarine.

Note: Darn! I’d been hoping to get one of them there nucular subs.

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Ignorant 2nd Amendment related comment by a pundit (# 4)

No one has argued that gun laws were the reason Loughner carried out his attack. What they suggest is that someone who wants to carry out an attack might be less able to do so without legal access to automatic weapons.

Note: Agreed. And the public has very little legal access to automatic weapons (which is probably why we use semi-automatic weapons).

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Why the euphoria over Egypt’s change in power?
Usually, a buyer wants to know what it is he’s purchasing before he buys it… So, Mubarak steps down, and there’s dancing in the streets, Obama applauds the Change, pundits drool over how Obama was – somehow – the catalyst. Yet no one is sure exactly who or what will replace Mubarak (other than the military, which is essentially what was there before).

Now, with Mubarak thumbing his nose at the president, the Obama administration may manage to achieve what only few governments in history have done: alienate their enemies as well as their friends. Worse, Obama’s actions have regionalized the Egyptian conflict. KSA has belayed Mubarak on the sheer cliff that he dangles from. It has forced a public confrontation between Mubarak and his regional allies and the unrest sweeping the Arab world. If Mubarak goes spinning into the abyss, the House of Saud will find itself pulled right after it.

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Border States tired of waiting for the Feds to act
Interesting. In New Mexico, the first female Hispanic governor in the U.S., Susana Martinez (R), issued an executive order directing police to ask the immigration status of criminal suspects, thereby ending the state’s sanctuary policy.

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Finger Motion Car Stereo Control

A new device is being presented to technologists this week that lets you control your car stereo by finger movements while your hands are still gripping the steering wheel.

Oh… I foresee some unexpected road rage incidents in the works if any of your finger movements, intended to turn up The Beatles, are misinterpreted by the driver next to you.

Think of how big the US economy is; the sum total of all the goods and services produced in an entire year. That’s how deep our debt is.

President Obama‘s budget, released Monday, was conceived as a blueprint for future spending, but it also paints the bleakest picture yet of the current fiscal year, which is on track for a record federal deficit and will see the government’s overall debt surpass the size of the total U.S. economy.

Mr. Obama‘s budget projects that 2011 will see the biggest one-year debt jump in history, or nearly $2 trillion, to reach $15.476 trillion by Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year. That would be 102.6 percent of GDP — the first time since World War II that dubious figure has been reached.

And the budget projects the government will run a deficit of $1.645 trillion this year, topping 2009’s previous record by more than $230 billion. By contrast, 2007’s deficit was just $160 billion altogether.

We do not need more tax increases. That has not solved the debt issue. Spending must be cut, substantially. That is one thing that has simply not been tried. The Tea Party exists because of this; the huge debt we are going to pass on to our great-grandchildren if we don’t do something about it now.

Within hours, maybe minutes, of the shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords, Liberal pundits began to point fingers at right wing extremists which, apparently, applied to Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican candidate for Vice President. Of particular concern was the “cross-hairs” image, used by Palin to establish which Democrats to target in upcoming elections. Evidently and, coincidentally after-the-fact, such violent imagery and rhetoric was said to have led to the carnage in Tucson. The cross-hairs image was referenced by Barbara Walters (on The View) when she stated,

“…and certainly cross-hairs are very scary…”

I wonder how scary Ms. Walters thinks a depiction of the President getting assassinated is?

Back in 2006 I wrote a blog post, for RedBlueChristian.com, about a docudrama depiction of the assassination of President George W. Bush. Note that the TV movie was produced in the U.K. Per The London Standard,

Held up by a secret service bodyguard in his dying moments after being shot in the stomach, this is President Bush being assassinated.

Surrounded by a crowd of panicking onlookers, the American leader is pictured just seconds after being gunned down by a sniper following an anti-war demonstration.

Of course, this 2006 docudrama is just a drop in the bucket of violent left-wing rhetoric – rhetoric which typically goes unreported by the mainstream media.

Regardless of the political affiliation of our elected officials, let us remember to treat them all with the respect and dignity they deserve, especially when they are maligned by those who truly would hope to do them harm.

It’s not often (well, ever) that a Friday Link Wrap-up would have breaking news, but as I type this, Hosni Mubarak has stepped down as President and put the military in charge, not his recently-named VP. This is a historic day for Egypt, as it now has its first living ex-President. Barry Rubin runs down the "now what?" scenarios.

Some town in the US, including one suburb of Atlanta, have a law requiring each household to own a gun. These towns have much lower crime rates than their neighbors. But with the cases going through the courts on the constitutionality of the ObamaCare individual mandate to buy health insurance, and with South Dakota considering a bill requiring gun ownership, Glenn Reynolds goes over the major differences between the two.

Reaganomics vs Obamanomics and getting us out of a recession.

In his first speech as Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron argued that a shared national identity prevents extremism more so than multiculturalism, and indeed, the latter may encourage it. If you have no connection to your country, you have no problem burning it.

Good morning. Interrogative day at link central. 😀

1. Money lost, is that stimulatory?
2. Liberation or conquest?
3. Zoom or huff-puff?
4. How to control costs in healthcare?
5. Who didn’t expect this? After all while there is consensus that spending should be cut there hasn’t been any consensus on what to cut. It’s why the Left’s “plan”, raising taxes is more feasible (even though raising taxes as a method of addressing deficits doesn’t actually work) is what will likely win. There’s no consensus required to just tax more. To bad the easy solution is the one that doesn’t work in this case.
6. Why oh why will the anthropogenic climate people not read stuff like this? I would call attention to the study of weather data for the last 140 years … noting “So we were surprised that none of the three major indices of climate variability that we used show a trend of increased circulation going back to 1871.” You know the recent (Krugman!) notes about increased storms and droughts. All confirmation bias. Ooops.
7. Is this a statement that the Palin haters would get on board with?
8. Is this not exactly to the point?
9. So what eactly is solertia and eustochia?
10. Is this a sign of our decline?
11. How to find a path between progress and history?
12. Abortion is here. How about that back alley?
13. Speaking of abortion, is this useful? At least he’s not bringing up the regrettable Violinist thang.

From way back in the year 2000 CE (which, by the way, converts to AD 2000), the Independent ran the following story, Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past,

Britain’s winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: snow is starting to disappear from our lives.

Sledges, snowmen, snowballs and the excitement of waking to find that the stuff has settled outside are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain’s culture, as warmer winters – which scientists are attributing to global climate change – produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries.

…

However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.

“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.

Now? From last December, on FoxNews, Anger Rises as Snow, Ice Snarls Britain,

Winter storms forced British government ministers and bank executives to postpone their meeting Monday on the politically touchy issue of bank bonuses. The Department of Business, Innovation and Skills did not announce a new date but said it hoped the meeting could be rescheduled later this week.

Forecasters have said Britain is experiencing some of the most severe winter weather in a century, with continued freezing temperatures and snowfall accumulations expected Monday afternoon and evening.

I recall a co-worker telling me a story of when he went on a school fieldtrip, in the late 1960s / early 1970s, to a nature preserve. This time was the genesis of the Earth Day movement, and at this particular preserve the school kids were told of the impending doom that awaited mankind. One statement that remained with him was the admonition / prediction that, if they didn’t take care of the earth, then their grandchildren wouldn’t know what a tree was.

As Christians we should be all about cherishing and managing the environment God has not only created, but given to us to take care of. Yet we should never fall into the trap of thinking we have the power or ability to save that environment – the laws of physics simply prove us wrong. Worse still, we should be wary of ever slipping into a modern-day worship of Mother Earth.

The book of Genesis has made clear where and from whom our environment has come.

Good morning.

1. More grist for the sociology departments lacking conservatives conversation. 
2. 27% … that’s basically almost all the Democrats … Seems to me you could argue he’s back ot the base and that’s the extent of it.
3. What passes for “not depraved.”
4. Well, that’s one asthetic, there are others. It is my understanding that an asthetic is a method by which you judge art … and after choosing your asthetic criticism is the application of the asthetic to artworks. If you want to use an asthetic that is sympathetic to ethics, then juding art on how it mananges to expose beauty would be in line with a view that ethics is also an enterprise trying to uncover beauty (or the good). 
5. What truth to power really looks like, the left’s preconceptions notwithstanding.
6. Getting it upside down. Parents not the government are responsible for the well being of their children, regulation of governmen schools is done to try to accomplish that. 
7. Iago and Rummy.
8. Booom. A less violent event here.
9. Talking cosmology.
10. Accuracy.
11. What Nicene Christians can learn from the LDS (Mormon).
12. Democrat misstep noted. Here too.
13. And some thoughts (and links) on Darwin.

James Taranto gives us a good history of the term "judicial activism" and its varied uses over the decades, especially with regards to the latest charges of "judicial activism" against judges who consider ObamaCare unconstitutional. Worth a read.

Patterico highlights one woman’s success story for her child because of school vouchers. However, he notes that, far from being just one bit of anecdotal evidence, this is a trend. He points to a CATO article that highlights a new federal study.

The latest federal study of the D.C. voucher program finds that voucher students have pulled significantly ahead of their public school peers in reading and perform at least as well as public school students in math. It also reports that the average tuition at the voucher schools is $6,620. That is ONE QUARTER what the District of Columbia spends per pupil on education ($26,555), according to the District’s own fiscal year 2009 budget.

Better results at a quarter the cost. And Democrats in Congress have sunset its funding and are trying to kill it. Shame on them.

If President Obama believes his own rhetoric on the need for greater efficiency in government education spending and for improved educational opportunities, he should work with the members of his own party to continue and grow this program.

But frankly, it’s all about the unions, not about education, for Democratic politicians.